"Israel’s history, both past and future, occupies no narrow region, either in the purposes of God or in his written Word. Besides, the prophecies concerning Israel are the key to all the rest. True principles of interpretation in regard to them will aid us in disentangling and illustrating all prophecy together. False principles as to them will most thoroughly perplex and overcloud the whole Word of God.

...In all cases, then, we are bound to adhere to the literal until we can show reasons for departing from it. These reasons ought to be well weighed and found sufficient before we venture to disturb the plain meaning of God’s own words. For instance, the Unitarian departs from the literal meaning of those passages which speak of our Lord’s incarnation and divinity because he cannot understand how such a sense is reconcilable with other Scripture statements respecting the unity of Godhead. But is that a valid reason for turning those passages into figures? The common sense of a man tells him that this is perverting, not expounding Scripture. If all strong expressions are to be set down as Orientalisms, which may be interpreted as we please, what becomes of inspiration?

But, I am told that the literal sense is often so carnal that it must be departed from. Perhaps in some cases it may be so; but every passage must first be brought separately to the test. A literal fulfilment is often just as spiritual as any other, and it is a strange misapprehension of the true scope of Scripture to suppose that because some interpret literally, therefore they do not interpret spiritually. Besides, with the comparative value of the spiritual over the literal, we have, in the first instance, nothing to do in interpreting Scripture. We have simply to ascertain the real meaning of the words, whether that meaning be literal or spiritual. - 

Take the prophecies regarding the incarnation of Christ. Before that event took place, there might be a controversy as to whether they were to be literally fulfilled or not. A Jew might have argued with much apparent force against a literal meaning. What! Is God to take upon himself the form of a man? Is Jehovah to become an infant of days, nay, to be born of a creature—to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief—to die and be buried, as men die and are buried? 

Impossible! the very idea is carnal beyond endurance. These prophecies cannot be interpreted in their literal sense; they must have some figurative, some spiritual meaning. So might a Jew have argued before Messiah came; and truly, when we think what it was that he had to believe regarding his Messiah, we could not have wondered, had he found much difficulty in receiving such prophecies as literal; our wonder is at the strength of that faith which, in spite of difficulties so vast, could take in the idea, and believe in the reality of that stupendous fact which the literal interpretation of prophecy involved! The fact, the glorious but stupendous fact, made known in the fulness of time, proved not only that the literal was the true sense of these prophecies regarding Messiah’s first coming, but also established this truth, that the literal interpretation and fulfilment may be the more truly spiritual of the two. Take, as another illustration of the point in hand, the doctrine of the resurrection. That doctrine appeared to some in the first ages such a carnal doctrine, that they denied the literal accomplishment of those Scriptures which speak of it. Of these were Hymenæus and Philetus, mentioned in the Second Epistle to Timothy. They maintained that a literal resurrection was such a carnal thing, that those passages which refer to it must mean something spiritual,—the resurrection of the soul from sin. They 'erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection was past already.' Here, also, the literal was the more spiritual of the two interpretations. - Horatius Bonar